Providence, RI, April 1, 2012: Green Penguin, Inc. has partnered with ecoRI and WBNA to collect electronic waste (commonly referred to as e-waste) on Saturday, April 28th in support of WBNA’s Neighborhood Wide Spring Clean Up. Green Penguin will be located at the Dexter Training Ground, a 9-acre city park on the west side of the city, from 8:30am – 12:30 pm. Anyone can drop-off their unused electronics – including batteries and software – to the Green Penguin truck. There will be a table providing information on proper e-waste disposal, along with a couple of different take-home reminders. For those who prefer, Green Penguin offers drop-offs in Olyneyville weekdays between the hours of 10am-6pm, and for larger quantities will arrange a pickup. To make these arrangements, please contact Becky Antaya at 401-383-9095 or becky@gpenguin.com. Items accepted and non-accepted are also located on the Green Penguin website: www.gpenguin.com/about/accepted.
Green Penguin has created multiple partnerships with city groups in the last few months with plans of playing a significant role in Rhode Island’s team effort to create and maintain sustainability by promoting reduce, reuse, and recycling of every city’s electronics waste.
Electronic equipment contains toxic materials, including lead, cadmium, and mercury that may leak into the soil and ground water when disposed of in landfills, which is now illegal in the state of Rhode Island. Green Penguin, Inc. strives to keep these and other materials found in electronic products, including precious and non-precious metals and plastics, out of landfills. Most electronic components can now be reused, recycled, and diverted from the waste stream. For example, approximately 90 percent of computer contents can be reused or recycled.
Green Penguin provides data destruction, asset recovery, and environmentally-responsible e-waste disposal. Green Penguin’s “No Landfill” policy ensures responsible disposal of all
electronics including, but not limited to laptops, desktops, servers and phone equipment. Green Penguin takes its “No Landfill” policy very seriously.

Providence, RI, February 8, 2012: Green Penguin, Inc. has partnered with ecoRI to collect electronic waste (commonly referred to as e-waste) every Saturday during the Winter Time Farmers’ Market at the Hope Artiste Village in Pawtucket. The market hours are 10am to 1pm every Saturday through May 16. Anyone can drop-off their unused electronics – including batteries and software – to the ecoRI table and a member of their team will deliver to the Green Penguin offices. For those who prefer, Green Penguin offers drop-offs in Olyneyville weekdays between the hours of 10am-6pm, and for larger quantities will arrange a pickup. To make these arrangements, please contact Becky Antaya at 401-383-9095 or becky.antaya@gpenguin.com.

Electronic equipment contains toxic materials, including lead, cadmium, and mercury that may leak into the soil and ground water when disposed of in landfills, which is now illegal in the state of Rhode Island. Green Penguin, Inc. strives to keep these and other materials found in electronic products, including precious metals and plastics, out of landfills. The good news is that by working with a conscientious e-waste management company, consumers can de-clutter their home and protect the environment. Most electronic components can now be reused, recycled, and diverted from the waste stream. For example, approximately 90 percent of computer contents can be reused or recycled.

Green Penguin, Inc. enables consumers all over the globe to fix, maintain, and upgrade electronic equipment that may have otherwise found its way into landfills. This is done by maintaining a rigorous recycling program, safely breaking down and sorting unusable electronic components, plastic, copper, steel, etc. so that each can be processed by an appropriate materials reclamation facility. By providing interested consumers with tested working components from unwanted and broken hardware, Green Penguin, Inc. is doing its part to empower consumers on both ends to be greener. The company provides its retail customers the opportunity to fix everything down to single keys on their laptop keyboards.

Green Penguin provides data destruction, asset recovery, and environmentally-responsible e-waste disposal. Green Penguin’s “No Landfill” policy ensures responsible hardware disposal of all electronics including, but not limited to laptops, desktops, servers and all telecommunication equipment.  Green Penguin takes its “No Landfill” policy very seriously.

Green Penguin Inc. is committed to reducing the volume of e-waste and its resulting impact on our environment and world.

With America Recycles Day being the only nationally recognized day dedicated to the promotion of recycling in the US, Green Penguin is striving to educate Rhode Island residents to recycle electronics safely and correctly. Green Penguin, Inc. and Providence Whole Foods Markets located at 601 North Main Street and 261 Waterman Street will be hosting an electronics waste drive starting at 10am on November 15th, 2011. If unable attend the event, or have more than a full vehicle of computer equipment to recycle, please call Green Penguin to arrange a drop-ff or pick-up.

Contact Info:

Becky Antaya
becky@gpenguin.com
P: 401-PENGUIN (736-4846)

So, you think you’ve got a bad backlight or a tech-savvy friend of yours turned on your laptop and said you have a bad backlight. .  . spoiler alert: there’s a big  (and important) difference between your laptop’s LCD backlight not coming on and the backlight actually being broken and unless you’ve fixed a LOT of  laptop LCD problems in your lifetime, this tends not to be something one knows.  A broken backlight means that the backlight is what needs to be replaced; a backlight simply not working, on the other hand, may have any of several sources, and a broken backlight is rarely the most probable cause.

Just one note before we get started: if your LCD screen comes (or used to) on somewhat (not entirely) dim or with a red discoloration or it comes on and flickers from the get-go, that’s usually a dying or dead backlight.  Proceed to our article on replacing your backlight the easy way!

First off, let’s cover some things that are not caused by a bad backlight

• Garbled screen with weird ‘artifacts’ at random times
• Laptop screen powering off or going wonky after a long period of use.
• Lines on the screen
• Screen appearing ‘shaky’ (weaving left to right or up and down at times)
• Generally: If your screen stays bright, it’s not the backlight.

So, why wouldn’t your laptop’s backlight not come on, even though the machine seems to be powering up?  There are four reasons major reasons (and I’ve yet to come up with a fifth):

1. Your laptop is not actually booting up (though part of it may be powering on, drives are spinning up, indicator lights flash, etc., it’s not actually doing any computing)
2. Your laptop screen has a bad inverter.
3. Your laptop’s motherboard has a damaged or bad video card.
4. Your LCD’s backlight is actually bad.

To be a little more sure, the first thing you’ll want to do is to turn on your laptop and have a close look at the screen under decent lighting conditions.  Power on the machine.  If your laptop’s LCD screen is not ‘lighting up’ but is showing a faint image on the screen (if you look very closely under reasonable lighting conditions, you see a very faint image on your screen that looks like what ought to be there, but isn’t lit up), then we know at least that your laptop is booting.

If your laptop screen is not lighting up, you’ll want to have tried both of the following before attempting a backlight replacement:

• replace the inverter with one of the exact same part number¹ (no, not just one advertised as matching your model of laptop, really, you’ll thank me later).
• inspect the LCD cable and found it in good condition and made sure it’s snugly in place.

If neither of those have fixed your problem, then attempting to replace your backlight is going to be the most cost effective next step in trying to fix your non-working screen.   Replacing your motherboard is the last thing to try.  We recommend you hold off on that until you’ve exhausted all other options.

1 I should note that Green Penguin Inc. does upon occasion advertise multiple compatibilities or even a part number as being compatible with most or all variations of a particular laptop.  In these cases, we have done extensive research into the matter, often having already tested and disassembled 30-40 different versions of the particular model of laptop in question.  I can’t guarantee it with anyone else and I want this information to be useful to you whether you purchase from us or not.   I want the result of your repair experience to be that if the part you’re replacing is faulty, the replacement fixes your problem, not makes it worse.

There are two highlighted part numbers, the FRU (in green) and the manufacturer part # (in blue). With IBM laptops, you'll want to match the FRU to guarantee compatibility.

Some not-so-common-sense advice on purchasing replacement parts for your laptop

This post covers a couple of topics in the area of purchasing an appropriate replacement part for your broken laptop.  It’s a somewhat involved topic, so we’ll just dive right in and get right to the point.  In most cases, it is very important that you match the part you are replacing with one of the identical part number.  Failure to do so may either result in you spending money and time on a part that does not serve your needs in the simplest of cases and in the worst, cause irreparable damage to your laptop.  Most models of  laptop (e.g. Dell Latitude D840 or IBM ThinkPad X61) come not only with many different available configurations for purchase, so from that standpoint alone, you’re not guaranteed to get the right part just by buying another part of that type for the same model.  The bezel from a 14.1″ screen will not fit a 15″ screen on the same model of laptop.  That’s just the most basic stuff though.  Let’s dig deeper.

First, let’s clear up a common misconception. As a result of a competitive market place and efforts by companies to keep their products as cheap as possible, the parts for your computer are rarely, if ever, manufactured by the company with its brand sticker on the case. In fact, in most cases, the parts weren’t designed by them either. In a lot of cases, they didn’t even assemble the product. That’s all fine and good as the brand owner provides the support, warranty, software setup, etc.

So wait, how does that impact you, a computer user looking to, hopefully, repair your own machine? Let’s delve a little deeper.

When replacing a component or upgrading a component on your laptop, it is important to know that while some parts work based upon specifications, such as RAM, hard drive, optical drive, and CPU, most part compatibility is very VERY specific. For example, screen size and aspect ratio are not even close to enough to tell you whether a particular screen will work with your machine.

As you know, laptops (and desktops and servers) come in many different brands, series and models. The first thing you might not know is that, for the most part, parts are not interchangeable between models made by the same manufacturer, even if the machines were made around the same time. Each model is made up a huge number of components from the screws to the plastics to the motherboard to the rubber screw covers. For a particular model of laptop, many of those individual parts came in a whole bunch of different part numbers (made by different manufacturers). For example, for a given model of laptop, in most cases, you’ll find no fewer than 3 different models of screen, often from different manufacturers. Each part number may work only with another component within the machine with a specific part number and no other. In the case of LCD inverters, for example, many models of laptop use the inverter to identify the specific LCD screen attached to it so that it can send the right data signal. Using the wrong inverter can fry your LCD, motherboard, or worse yet, both (trust me, I’ve seen it, many many times). Another curious case of incompatibility I’ve seen is whole screens w/ cable and inverter that are compatible with one motherboard in particular model of laptop and not another.

Fear not though, there’s hope. Finding your new part is probably way easier than you think. It might take a search or two before you get right, but pretty much every part made in the last twenty years for a laptop is available out there somewhere and, in most cases, not especially hard to find. Before you rush out though, how’s about some tips on buying:

1) If possible, look into the seller’s reputation. eBay, for example, has a very simple means by which to do this. Checking their DSR (detailed seller ratings) and feedback will give you a good idea as to how willing they are to work with their customers and how often they send out bad product.  If you’re not experienced with this, go ahead and check out the feedback of some sellers selling the product you need.  Personally, I try only to purchase replacement parts from sellers rated 99.8% or above and with a 4.9/5 in the “Item As Described” rating.   For non-eBay purchasing, try a google search for the name of the vendor site you’re considering along with either “complaints” or “problems”.

2) In spite of what an item’s title may say and what a listing may leave out, just because a part is listed for your model of laptop doesn’t mean it will work with your specific laptop. I don’t know whether this is an eBay phenomenon or all over the internet (as I do literally all of my online parts purchases through eBay), but one thing I’ve found is a LOT of misleading or missing information about compatibility. The most common of these would be a listing on a site such as eBay with the title LCD Screen for Brand Model Laptop p/n 123456a which, in the description, makes no mention of what the seller no doubt knows — that in many cases, it is crucial to match the part number to that of the part you are replacing, leaving it to the novice buyer to trip over himself (possibly breaking his machine in the process) before getting it right. These sellers could take a moment to include a little line about making sure your part number matches, but that would hinder their own bottom line. These sellers count on buyers feeling foolish for their own lack of knowledge in having purchased a non-matching part. They depend upon a nearly infinite marketplace of users just like you who are going to try to fix their own product and who will throw their hands up in frustration (and not return the part, which they’d have to do at their own expense of money and time anyway) having already outlaid cash for something that in no way solved their computer’s problem. While technically this is fiscally sound, it does seem a little, well, dishonest.

3) Having found a seller you can trust, read the listing carefully. Make sure it matches your part number or is at least guaranteed compatible. Make sure that it’s not for parts, that the shipping price is acceptable and that the seller maintains a fair returns policy. Lastly, having read the listing closely, don’t be afraid to ask questions if they aren’t answered directly in the listing. If the seller fails to respond to your questions ahead of the sale, you can assume they won’t be there later if something goes wrong.

Straight through the heart, no really, someone in the UK actually shot this.

Some thoughts on data destruction and security when disposing of your PC.

I’ve been meaning to write this article for quite some time and recent research into bulk drive erasure and recertification has finally led to the impetus to actually produce it. I’ve known for quite a while that batch (automated) erasure/formatting of multiple SCSI (commonly found in servers manufactured through 2007) drives was far more complicated than it ought to be. Further research has led me to that same conclusion. . .and I’m going to save my thoughts on that for a later article.

The thrust of this article is that there are far too many people who are either careful to a level of paranoia or totally careless with their sensitive data and that there is, in fact, a happy medium.

House Rules:

It seems only appropriate that I bore you by first explaining our policies on data security, lest there be any ambiguity.  We encourage, endorse, and practice DOD level software wiping of all drives and support any client who seeks more stringent methods to meet legal or internal obligations.  All hardware handled by Green Penguin, Inc. is managed in a secure facility with surveillance cameras throughout the building.

Where it is the requirement of the customer that their drives are physically destroyed, we aggressively comply with this standard providing certificates of destruction and chain of command documents for all data-bearing articles entering our possession.  All other hard drives we receive (both inside and removed from computers) follow a lock-step procedure that makes it impossible for a drive (or any of its sensitive data) to leave our office tested as working with a shred of recoverable data remaining — all working drives that come into our hands are DoD wiped, no matter what.  In cases where drive malfunction prevents software wiping, the drives are drilled and degaussed. We encourage anyone, be they corporate decision-maker or private individual to be very careful of how their hardware is handled once it leaves their possession, especially if they have not, themselves, been able to secure their private data as described a little later in this article.

On hardware disposal and data security:

There is a lot of mythology, mis/dis-information, and fear about data theft and data destruction that has led to some pretty screwy corporate policies and laws regulating the handling of hard drives at the time of decommissioning.  For example, a lot of people and companies feel the need to go to great lengths to ensure that their hardware is physically destroyed with a powerful mechanical shredder, usually after degaussing, which, while providing a measured certainty of data destruction, is far from necessary.  A far clearer explanation of this phenomenon than I could possibly provide can be found here on WikiPedia

I’m not saying that the aforementioned fears aren’t reasonable, but they ought have nothing to do with actual danger of erased data being recovered. Distrust of external handlers and fears of incompetence (either internal or external) are far more reasonable concerns.

I recently did an audit of drives in computers we were acquiring from a prominent and reputable New England recycler.  The computers that we didn’t purchase were sold by the pound to someone who was no doubt sending them overseas to be dismantled in an even less secure environment. This audit confirmed further what I already knew from my time as a refurbisher purchasing machines from many recyclers, asset recovery specialists and computer repair shops — people are far too trusting in the handling of their sensitive data — in many cases important parts of your life are on that computer, ripe for the picking.

The data on most of the computers we acquired was not in any way secured, the hard drives were still in them and in most cases, the computers booted straight into Windows just as their previous owners had left them.  In one case, an HP Pavilion a712n Desktop PC came fully loaded with all of the stock-trading software, passwords and, though I didn’t press further, no doubt, bank account information as well (yes, I wiped that hard drive immediately using software listed later in this article). In other cases, it would have been very easy for even a novice hacker with some very basic tools to exploit the data left behind on people’s machines.

Your computer’s hard drive may have any or all of the following on it at any given time (including when you get rid of it if you don’t take the appropriate measures) — your web browsing history, passwords, personal photos, name, bank account information, home movies, website logins and who knows what else. . .everything you keep or enter into your computer. With that in mind, let me assure you that taking it to a recycling facility or municipal waste facility is not a guarantee that your data is secure. Fear not, for it is not doomspeak, but hope that I bring you and it’s easy.

I have in the past and will continue to advocate for the proper use of software based data destruction which comes down simply to knowing which tools to use and using them. Tools such as DBAN (Darik’s Boot and Nuke and Active Kill Disk are fully available, easy to use and allow the user to easily produce something (floppy, USB stick or CD) which will securely and completely erase all data from all functional hard drives inside of the machine, simply by placing it into the machine,  and turning it on and pressing a couple keys.

This all begs the question of why I care.  Aside from the simple fact that shredding drives directly increases e-waste by putting into the waste stream fully usable hardware, there are more personal matters afoot.  Initially, the sentiment was a self-centered one. When I was running a laptop refurbishing company, hard drives were consistently the most expensive part we needed to complete the systems we were selling.  Almost none of the machines we were acquiring came with them!  Drives do often fail so, naturally, there should be some measure of demand for them.  That said they fail no more often than the other parts of a laptop in aggregate, so, in theory, given that they are generally considered a ‘stock component’ they should be widely available at a reasonable price and they’re just not. This drove up our costs considerably which, of course, was irritating. Fast forward to a time when I no longer generally sell whole laptops. . .why should I care?  Well, quite simply, hard drives are necessary for a computer to run.  If there aren’t enough hard drives to refurbish the reusable computers out there, the costs of making them reusable go up and it becomes less worthwhile to facilitate that reusing.  The end result is, a measurable increase in the volume and rate of the e-waste stream.  While it’s good for us in that it gives us something to strive for, we’d rather the problem not exist it the first place.

If you’ve got questions or comments, I’d / we’d love to hear from you.  We’re always looking for active partners and ideas in our unending quest for sustainable management of all waste.